Lovecraft short stories
by Raeg Vashin
Summary: I decided to write a bunch of short stories in the Cthulhu Mythos. I have tried to stay true to Lovecraft's universe and style. Please note that each story is self-contained, although they do take place in the same universe.
1. Chapter 1

There are things in this world which man was never meant to find. It is quite ironic how readily most people will support any cause which allows them to come into contact with the unknown. It is this curiosity which I believe will inevitably lead to our demise. As these words will most likely be my last, I can quite clearly attest to the truth in this theory. It is unlikely that anyone who reads this will be as clear-sighted as I currently feel – indeed, my descriptions of the horrors that I have experienced will no doubt leave some people with a compulsion to walk in my footsteps. I know that am unable to stop this. However, I must still strongly advise the reader against doing so. What I – _we_ found – was not something that can be described with mere English words, nor will any painter's imagination suffice. Even as I am sitting here now, I can feel my sanity attempting to push away that horrible experience, that _thing_. But I must recount it – I must retell the tale of what I and my travel companions found all those years ago, in South America. I have been oblivious to the signals, to the deaths of my old friends. But every once in a while, there have been word of bloody murder – no, not murder, suicide – and too many times, the victim was someone I knew. To be honest, I have not had much contact with any of them since the expedition. And then, three weeks ago, I received a letter that was signed by Patrick Bergmann. It read thus:

_Dear friend. I am afraid that I am slowly losing my mind. For the past few weeks, I have been followed by something. I have blocked out the sun from my window, and when walking through the house, I try to avoid making any noises. And whatever it is, whatever this being that is stalking me is, I am certain that it has come because of what happened in the jungle, all those years ago. Do you remember? Of course you do, how could you forget? How could any of us forget? But back then, we made a promise never to tell the world about what happened. But now, now we must talk. We are the only two left from the original expedition. Have you seen the obituaries? I have put them onto my wall, to remind me of what is waiting._

_For the last few nights, there have been sounds everywhere. Downstairs in the house and outside my window. Something scratching, rustling around. I dare not look during the night, but every single morning, I notice that my books and papers do not lie where I left them the evening before. And when I do fall asleep, I have horrible dreams. Things, places that are not of this world. Shadows moving amongst enormous obsidian buildings. Creatures that are utterly incomprehensible. Alien geometry. Sometimes, the dreams are different. Sometimes, the creatures abduct me and take me to strange places. I cannot see them clearly, but I can feel them. They are outsiders, and the air around them is different from ours. They cannot survive here, so they take people away, to their own home._

_Something is coming. I cannot evade it any longer. Tonight, it will come for me. That is why I am sending you this letter: In the hopes that someone might be able to defeat it, to make it through this alive. I have high hopes for you._

_Your friend,_

_Patrick C. Bergmann_

Upon reading this letter, I dismissed it as the ramblings of a madman. Deep down, I had felt this same fear, because the thought had also struck me – what if there was a reason behind the deaths of the four others? Somehow, we thought we had escaped, that merely by going home, we would be safe from what we discovered in the jungle. But this was, of course, foolish. I sent another letter to Bergmann, but found out that he had shot himself the same day as he sent the letter to me. And as the last survivor of what happened, I feel that it is my obligation to break that pact we made all those years ago. I need to tell the truth about what happened, because even now, I know that there is something outside my window. It is not trying to get in, nor is it doing anything that indicates its true intentions. But it is there, I know that much. My time is running out, and I feel that writing out the truth is the only sensible course of action at this point.

I was born into a relatively wealthy family. I received very good grades throughout my entire education, and my dream of becoming an archaeologist was quite puzzling to my parents, who wished for me to become a doctor. Still, they hoped for it to merely be a "phase", and when I asked for help with funding an expedition with five of my friends to the Amazon forest, they complied. This was going to happen in the summer of 1924. Throughout the next seven months, we gathered the funding necessary for mounting such an expedition – our goal was the investigation of some recently discovered Pre-Columbian ruins. It was a long trip from England, and it took weeks to get across by boat. During these weeks, it turned out that not all of us had the iron stomach that we boasted about. At one point, I thought about taking the boat back immediately upon landing. I wish I had.

When we got onto the shore, we were all surprised at how humid and hot the country actually was. Our local guides did, of course, not have any troubles with the weather, and were quite amused by our agonies in the beginning. Deciding that we did not want to put up with that kind of things (Keep in mind that we were English gentlemen, and thus obliged to at least try to keep up appearances), we managed to shrug off the uncomfortable nature of it all rather quickly. While we were never told so, I have a feeling that this earned at least a bit of respect from our three guides. This also made me even sorrier about what happened to them. But as things were, we spent the next two days stocking up at vastly inflated prices in the local port town. Eventually, the nine of us managed to suit up and head into the jungle, our guides leading the way. The five of us were young and excited, while the sixth, a professor from Oxford College, seemed worried the instant we set foot in the forest. I saw him standing there, staring wistfully at the ocean. When I asked him why, he merely told me that it might be a while until we saw it again, and that he wanted to take a last look. I nodded, turned around and started walking, and so did he after a short while. At the time, I paid little attention to it, but considering what happened later, he might have known something that the rest of us did not.

The next few days of travel through the jungle were uncomfortable, yet rather uneventful. There were some problems with leeches and other native creatures, though our guides did not appear to mind much. And obviously, we had to follow their example – young and arrogant as we were. At one point, we got lost, but at this point, our guides merely showed the way. And eventually, we found something. But there was something inherently wrong about the place – our guides, however, assured us that these ruins were, indeed, the famous ones that had been found recently. But there were no humans to be found in the area around them. The ruins themselves, however, defied all description. They were nothing like what was usually built by Pre-Columbian civilisations. The carved murals were even more puzzling – upon further inspections, they showed primitive warriors fighting off something... Alien. What they were fighting was not depicted in its entirety. Instead, there was a carving in the stone of numerous tentacles reaching through a rift in reality. The lack of details left one's imagination to fill out the details, something which was arguably more horrific than whatever any human would be able to depict. Indeed, upon closer inspection, I seemed to find details that I had not noticed previously – small symbols surrounding the creature, symbols which almost seemed to be alive with a malicious will of their own.

Prolonged exposure to the sight of these symbols strained the eyes and left me with a bout of nausea. I cannot put my finger on exactly what it was, but the very nature of the symbols was unnatural and surreal. They could not exist, and yet they did. The carving itself also seemed to change, as if the wall tried to repel the unnatural nature of what had been depicted on it. The resulting effect made me question my sanity, and I decided to show the others what I had found. But it turned out that I was not the only one to discover something like this. There were many more carvings, all depicting the same symbols and beings. The guides kept assuring us that these were indeed the ruins that we had been looking for. And there were some signs of people: Remains of fires, mostly – the warm, humid climate had must likely reclaimed whatever perishable materials might have been left, and scavengers had found the rest. The question was, with such an incredible discovery, how come the place was utterly deserted? When asking our guides, they seemed slightly unnerved, which we attributed to local superstition. They spoke of something which only held a name in their native tongue. In the end, we decided to continue the examination, regardless of their jumpy behaviour.

When night fell, we were all quite exhausted. The rations were not particularly thrilling, but they were welcomed, famished as we were. The guides had put up tents for all of us, with nets to keep out the critters of the night. The night was filled with sounds, but overall, it was rather pleasant, albeit quite humid. But the sounds... Most of them were merely made by animals, but every once in a while, we would hear some that sounded like echoes coming from beneath the ground. When I asked Miller, who was lying the closest to me about it, he merely concluded that it was volcanic activity. At the time, this seemed like a sensible answer – when we asked the guides about evacuation, they told us that there was no cause for alarm. And eventually, I went to sleep. But as pleasant as the night was, my sleep was haunted by horrible dreams. Old buildings twisted into impossible shapes, creatures walking amongst them, worshipping gods that had been forgotten by humanity long ago. Whether this was a different planet, dimension or, as I presumed, a different time, I found that when I awoke, what I had seen, felt and smelled in the dream was mostly gone from my mind.

The next day, we managed to uncover more of the ruins' secrets. We compared our findings, and found that murals like the ones I had found were present on numerous walls. But the most peculiar discovery was the small statuette that Bergmann found. It seemed much newer than the ruins themselves, and yet the motifs seemed quite similar to what the murals depicted: A formless horror covered in writhing tentacles, which were in turn filled with fanged, gaping maws. The tentacles covered the entire body of the abomination, mercifully shielding our eyes from its true form. Beneath it were the twisted forms of what upon closer inspection revealed itself to be humans, praying to the blasphemous being through orgies and self-mutilation. Wherever one did not look, the carved creatures and people seemed to change slightly, something that was only visible upon close inspection and with a keen eye. But despite that, I had no doubts about the existence of these changes. My friends agreed on this, and we spent the rest of the day studying the odd statuette. Miller attempted to draw it, but unsuccessfully – it simply defied any attempt to being put to paper. Food this evening was provided by the native guides, and was surprisingly good – we were told that the large guinea pigs we ate were a local specialty. I must admit that I quite enjoyed the native food, although this can probably be attributed to my hunger, rather than the quality of the cooking that we were served – my tastes are normally quite refined.

The following day, it appeared that something had happened during the night. Our equipment had been scattered around and at least one tree had vicious marks on it that seemed to have been made by some large animal. I had slept extraordinarily well that night, but the others told about loud noises and something going bump during the night. Our guides wanted to leave, but we asked to stay for two more days, so that we could finish drawing and describing what we had found. The ruins were actually larger than we had originally assumed them to be – as we realised how little time we had, we explored the clearing completely and found out that this was actually a small city. And as it was noted before, it was eerily devoid of any signs of people having been here before. I was the one who discovered the meaning of the place. Wandering around, I found a large, round stone slab which seemed to have been moved recently. After calling the others and working at it for a few hours, we eventually found the mechanism that moved it. A grinding sound accompanied the slab moving, and ancient, cool air rose up from the hole. We found some torches, and the nine of us entered the hole.

A spiral staircase lead into the darkness, murals carved into the walls all the way down. The horrible symbols from before appeared every now and then, sickening me as much as the first ones had. The staircase was long, but it eventually ended. At the foot was a large room with statues sitting in rows all the way along the walls. The statues were most definitely not human, nor were they reminiscent of any old deity that anyone knew of. They were intricately detailed and depicted beings beyond description – horrible beings that could and should simply not exist. Even the statues seemed to distort the natural laws in order for themselves to exist. There was another room adjacent to this one, which we entered. Another flight of stairs lead down into more darkness. As we reached the bottom of these, we were greeted with a breathtaking sight: A pyramid, imposing and ominous. It was made from a dark stone material – judging by the texture, this was most likely obsidian. Where these primitive people had found it and how they had managed to transport and form it was a mystery.

But there was something more in here. We could not see much of the massive underground room that we had entered by the dim light of the torch, but it was quite clear that it was something unique. The obsidian was as smooth as glass in some areas, and a set of stairs led up to the top of the pyramid. At every level sat two statues at each side of the stairs, but I dared not shine a light on them. None of us really wanted to know any more about whom or what had built this, but we knew that we had to explore it for the sake of scientific discovery. We ascended the flight of stairs together, all nervous for some reason that I cannot explain. At the top, there was a door. After we found and turned three round handles, it slid open, dead air escaping from the hole. At this point, Newman was caught in a fit of panic. Maybe he saw something in the darkness that the rest of us did not. He ran away, screaming wildly. We followed him, of course, and left the door unlocked. I did not think of it back then, but today, I know that this was a fatal mistake. We later found him huddled in a corner, whimpering and gnashing his teeth. The man could not be brought to his senses – when we tried to talk to him, the only response was a faint, gibberish muttering.

We took Newman with us to the surface, where night had already fallen. The guides had cooked up dinner for us. But upon seeing the state that Newman was in, they tried to communicate with us, to ask questions about what had happened. When we managed to tell them, they seemed genuinely horrified. They wanted to go home immediately, but we eventually managed to convince them that this should wait until the morning. After all, Newman needed to get to civilisation if he was not better by tomorrow. If he was, there was little reason not to stay here – science had to come before the wishes of the natives. As we were eating, I thought I heard more sounds from beneath. But it did not sound like before. Something echoed through the empty halls down there, as if something was moving – something large. I dismissed it as a figment of my imagination. As we all went to bed, our guides stayed up, and kept watch. The sounds continued for a while before falling silent. I fell asleep shortly thereafter.

My dreams were odd and frightening. A city with cyclopean obsidian structures, spires of polished, black stone extending into the air and far out of my sight. Shadows were moving among the buildings, growing more tangible as I regarded them. They were horrific creatures, things not of this world. And then, suddenly, the city was ablaze. It was under attack from other beings, just as alien as the ones that I had been walking amongst. The air was filled with a cacophony of screams from inhuman throats and explosions, building collapsing everywhere. I was caught in the middle of a war. And then, suddenly, I was not. I was flying out of my body, far away from the conflict. I saw the entire world beneath me, two civilisations fighting for dominance, both collapsing under the weight of the struggle.

I was awoken by Bergmann in the early morning hours. When I escaped from the dazed clutches of sleep, he told me that Newman and the guides were gone. We called out and looked for them, but they were nowhere to be found. As much as it annoyed me, we had to mount a search party. We packed up our things and started making our way through the jungle. After hours of calling and searching, we found what we were looking for. The next few seconds are quite frantic in my memory. It was Newman and one of the guides, or more accurately, what was left of them. Newman was hanging from a tree, and his lower body was missing, the entrails hanging down like pink, fleshy ropes. The guide was lying in the midst of a large pool of blood and entrails, scattered on the forest floor as well as the trees around it. There was a look of sheer horror on his face, and it seemed that he had clawed out his own eyes – his face was covered in scratches and blood, and his fingers were soaked in blood. The stomach had been ripped open, and his left leg had been ripped to the point of the flesh being completely tattered.

Not far away, we heard a scream. It stretched out and was filled with pain. And something else, sounds that did not belong here. There were no animals around, just the sounds of a man screaming and whatever he was screaming at. And then the screaming stopped. Slowly, we began backing away. And then something, something moved toward us. It was fast. We all started running. At one point, I threw a glance over my neck and caught a glimpse of something. I cannot describe what I saw, for there is simply nothing with which to compare what I saw. It was a monster, worse than anything I had heard of in legends. My mind could not truly comprehend what I saw, for today, it is impossible for me to retell the events that happened afterwards. They say that I and three of the others – including Bergmann – were found at the outskirts of the jungle, our clothes covered in blood. We had apparently been conscious enough to tell our names and addresses, for when I awoke, it was in a bed in the local madhouse. I do not know for how long I was in there, but after I awoke, I managed to convince the doctors that I was, indeed, as sane as any man.

We tried to forget what we had seen and experienced in South America, and made a pact that we would not tell anyone. But with the death of Bergmann, I feel that it is my duty to inform the world of what lurks in the dark corners of the Earth. Those who have not experienced true horror as I have will obviously only see this as a story, something with which to amuse themselves. But for the few readers who will know that his is true: I beg you, correct what we did wrong. And learn from our mistakes. There are things that Man was not meant to know. And we crossed that line. We found That, the thing which has hunted us for so long. What will happen once it is finished with us? Will it go back from whence it came? I doubt it. It has been in hibernation for untold eons, since before Man even existed. A new feeding ground has grown forth from the ashes of the crumbling world that it left behind. To the ancients, humans are merely prey. We only exist to sate their age-old hunger. I hear it now. It is coming. The stench and sounds are unmistakable. It has entered the house. Too early. I had at the very least hoped to finish my


	2. Chapter 2

[Woo, an update. Inspiration is hard to come by, and my mind has recently been occupied with fighting off the madness that lurks beyond the minds of men. I'm not thrilled about this story, but I felt like I should upload something, so... Enjoy! Oh yeah, and this one actually has a title. Well, if anyone has any good ideas for another story, feel free to tell me, because I'm running low on Eldritch inspiration at the moment.]

**The Lurker**

Despite my numerous attempts at contacting more serious news outlets, it seems that I have to settle for the tabloids for now. While such a thing is usually far below my level, I have found it necessary to settle for less in this particular case. And in a way, I can understand why. Blindness towards unfortunate truths is one of mankind's greatest assets – blissful ignorance is our default reaction to horrifying events, and it is really quite marvelous. However, I cannot help but speak up now. People will see me as a madman, someone who craves attention and sensation, but that is really of little concern to me at this point. What does concern me is how readily available information is in this day and time. You may laugh at me for saying this, but the best thing right now would be for humanity to enter a new Dark Age, lest we uncover something that should have been left alone. We punish ignorance, when we should, in fact, reward it. Now, I know how my fellow scholars will snicker at these statements, so I will elaborate.

I have recently been investigating material for a new book that I was going to write, "Cults and religions in Southern England". The occult has always held a sort of bile fascination for me, despite the fact that I have never made any real research into the matter. Thus, I decided to write the book. It started out simple – cults worshipping everything from the Devil to trees were apparently plentiful. But one in particular caught my interest after a while. In Dorset, I was looking into people worshipping the Cerne Abbas giant when someone told me that these were "not real cultists". It was an elderly man, grinning at me with a toothless smile. I asked him about what he meant by such a statement, and he handed me a scrap of paper. It was old and crumpled, but as I unfolded it, I knew that this was not another of the fake magic incantations that I had seen hundreds of at this point. The writing was very faded and the paper itself had dark stains on it. However, the words still seemed extremely clear – it was some Italic language, most likely Latin. As I was not well-versed in the language at that point, I asked the old man to translate for me. He grinned again and held out his hand, indicating that his services were not free of charge. Normally, I would be quick to refuse such an offer, but there was something about the words themselves which felt both arcane and deeply unsettling.

As he began translating, I noticed that his voice seemed to change at some points in the text, trembling slightly when he reached a certain word. I had no idea what it meant, and yet hearing it sent a small tremor through my body, and a feeling of treading on forbidden ground, of uncovering ancient secrets that were meant to stay in the darkness. That name was Yog-Sothoth. Despite all of the skepticism that I had acquired throughout my work with all of these fake religions, I felt spellbound and sat completely still as the old man spoke. I still have that page in a glass container on my desk. The following passage is what caught my attention the most:

…_But of all the Elder Gods, there is none more powerful than Yog-Sothoth. The passage of time and existence itself are His to command as He wishes. We are but tiny specks on the canvas of infinity, our insignificance _*Text becomes unreadable* _the almighty Yog-Sothoth, the gate, the key, the watcher, keeper and defiler of eternity._

It was the sense of scale in this which troubled me the most. I have been lying awake for countless, pondering this. But at that point, I merely asked the old man where the page came from. He mentioned the name Abdul Alhazred. I wanted to buy the page from him, but he thrust it into my hand and told me that he never wanted to see me or the piece of paper again. I agreed and thanked him for his help before leaving. Going to the nearest library, I asked about the name. The librarian, an elderly man, seemed somewhat unsettled when I mentioned the name, but was quick to tell me that only one copy of the book was available in all of Dorset, and it resided in Dorchester's library. I stayed at the local inn through the night, though I did not get much rest. My sleep was troubled by dreams in which shining orbs of light seemed to glimmer in the distance as I moved through a dense fog towards them.

The following day, I travelled to Dorchestershire, where I asked for the book in the library, just as I had before. This time, however, it was a young man who searched for it. Had it been a more experienced librarian, I doubt that I would have been able to get the book. As it was, he seemed to know little of what it really was, and let me borrow it without any problems, despite the fact that the book itself had been encase in a locked box until now. I thought little about it, as I went to the nearest inn and rented a room in order to study it more closely. It turned out that the book was in Greek, so I contacted my good friend, Friedrich Vilheim von Junzt, who knew the language. I wrote down a few of the pages in the book as best as I could, and sent him my own scribbling alongside the letter. For the next couple of weeks, I studied the book, even though I did not know the language. There were numerous illustrations in it, some of them showing how to create ritualistic circles, others depicting things which seemed to strain and hurt my eyes as I looked at them. Some of the text acted the same way – while most of it was just incomprehensible to me, there was occasionally some which seemed to crawl across the page and move of its own accord, the ink seemingly trying to erase what had been written with it. I attributed these to my tired mind, and decided to go to bed.

When I received a reply to my letter, I was thrilled at first. I opened the envelope, reading the message from my friend first. I later destroyed the contents of the letter, so I am unable to recreate the exact text, but the rough message was as follows:

_Dear Walther_

_There are some things within this world, which are simply not within the nature of Man. We are short-lived and narrow-minded creatures, always preferring to stay within our own comfort zone. What you have found is a window into what lies beyond that. The text is mostly written in Greek, but there is something else in there, a tongue which I am unable to decipher. I have made some investigation into the matter. What you have is a copy of the Necronomicon, something which I previously thought was a purely fictional document. The mere fact that it exists is simply beyond my imagination. I feel that further investigation and documentation of the matter is necessary._

I do not remember the rest of the letter. It was long, but the rest of it seemed to devolve into frantic sentences which made little sense. The words were nothing out of the ordinary, except for a few odd ones which were repeated at erratic intervals. At the end, Junzt had written a phrase in his native language to sum up the translation: "Unaussprechlicher Worte". After this, I read the translated pages. I will not describe in any grand detail, what they contained, but they contained numerous mentions of the name Yog-Sothoth, along with several incantations and spells. I put the pages away and took a walk in the city before I went to sleep.

That night, the glowing orbs had grown closer. They were more intense now, and I had to shield my eyes. But the colour... It was unnatural. Somehow, these orbs were glowing in shifting colours, the likes of which I had never seen before. Occasionally they would vanish from my sight, appearing as a singular black void instead. As I woke up, I blinked frantically, realising that my eyes had been open this entire time. I wanted to let out a scream. I felt so scared and lonely. Existence itself seemed to be slightly blurred for a few seconds before returning to normal, and I felt as if I was underwater. What had I seen? Right when I woke up, I remembered more of the dream, but it slipped away as I tried to collect myself. After I finally got up, I dragged myself to the desk, where I resumed my study of the pages.

As I was reading, a specific instance of the alien words caught my attention. I have no idea why, but as I read it, the mysteries of the language seemed to unravel in my mind. And I spoke. I spoke those horrible words, and I could not stop until I had said all of them. My body was not my own, and I was merely a passenger, witnessing what was happening. Images flashed before my mind, naked human bodies being intertwined in an orgy of worship, eldritch creatures being summoned forth from rips in space and time, devouring their followers. I think I screamed, but I am not sure. It took me a while to realise that it had stopped. I looked up and saw that the room was just as it had always been. I leaned back in my chair and sighed. But there was something in the corner. I turned toward it, but I could not see anything. And yet, there was something there. It was staring at me without eyes, smelling me without a nose. It was then that I decided not to stay at the inn any longer. I picked up the necessities and scrambled frantically as I ran out the door. I could still feel the creature following me. I took the first train back to my home in Cornwall. For six days, I did not sleep, fearing what the night would bring. Would the being attack me in my sleep?

Eventually, I reached a point where I succumbed to my exhaustion. The dreams were worse than ever. Now, I could see the being. It was a writhing mass of tentacles which crept behind me at all times. I saw all the time since I summoned it from the perspective of an outsider. All this time, the creature had been there, lurking, waiting for its chance. The scene changed. I saw the orbs again, but this time, they were no longer perfectly spherical. Instead, their visage seemed to fray at the edges, clashing with the reality around them. And now I noticed their scale. The orbs were surrounded by miniscule humans falling to their knees in worship as they were being devoured by the orbs. Reality was ripped apart in the dream as I realised what I was seeing. Yog-Sothoth, Elder God, master of Now and Then, the Watcher... The orbs started merging together into a single being. My dream fractured and the pieces exploded as his true form revealed itself.

I woke up in dead silence, as I felt something inside my nose and ears and around my body, constricting me. As I struggled, it eventually slithered back into the darkness, still waiting. That was two weeks ago. I have since learned that Junzt has begun working on a book based on his discovery of the Necronomicon, and has even acquired a copy himself. Me, I have been unable to get his help for getting rid of what I have created – the fact that I have summoned a demon of Yog-Sothoth seemed to excite him, and he asked me questions about it, one of which was how to summon it. At that point, I knew the man had gone insane. Every night, I have the same dream. Every morning, the being becomes a little harder to fight off. This will be my final testimony. I, Walther Hermann Locke, will not be dragged into screaming oblivion. I will destroy both of us. Let this be a warning to everyone: Burn all books. Forget everything. Forbidden knowledge is forbidden for a reason, and forgotten lore should stay forgotten.

_Editor's note: The author, Locke, was found dead in his study after having submitted this to us. It appears that he himself burned down the house. This may be attributed to insanity. However, his charred copse seemed to have been ripped apart before the house had even burned down. Senior officer Brown states that the police are looking into the matter, but are currently treating it as murder. Witnesses claim that no one entered or exited the house before the fire fighters arrived._


End file.
